Inspirational Quotes by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children—all depending on their obedience—and they will submit to us gladly and joyfully.”

“God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day. Where did the light come from on the first day?" Grigory was thunderstruck. The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher. There was something positively condescending in his expression. Grigory could not restrain himself. "I'll show you where!" he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek. The boy took the slap without a word,”

“That kind always has the public good as a motive to justify every abomination.”

“Don’t tell me! You’re just rubbing it in! It serves me right, though: it was vanity that kept me from coming, egoistic vanity and base despotism, which I haven’t been able to get rid of all my life, though all my life I’ve been trying to break myself.”

“Hm… yes, all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom.”

“It's not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept.”

“And what is the use of Christ's words, unless we set an example?”

“¿Será verdad, como dice la religiòn que resucitaremos de entre los muertos, que volveremos a vernos los unos a los otros, que veremos a todos?. Resucitaremos sin falta, nos veremos sin falta y con gozo y alegría nos contaremos los unos a los otros todo lo que nos haya sucedido. ¡Oh, qué hermoso será".”

“I love mankind,' he said, 'but I marvel at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love human beings in particular, separately, that is, as individual persons.”

“I MUST make one confession” Ivan began. “I could never understand how one can love one’s neighbours.”

“But … that’s absurd!” he cried, blushing. “Your poem praises Jesus, it doesn’t revile him … as you meant it to. And who will believe you about freedom? Is that, is that any way to understand it? It’s a far cry from the Orthodox idea … It’s Rome, and not even the whole of Rome, that isn’t true—they’re the worst of Catholicism, the Inquisitors, the Jesuits … ! But there could not even possibly be such a fantastic person as your Inquisitor. What sins do they take on themselves?”

“And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, "I exist." In thousands of agonies一 I exist. I'm tormented on the rack一 but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar一 I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

“I’m not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of character to face them. "I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind," he said aloud.”

“Hay muchas personas mayores que se complacen en torturar a los niños, pero sólo a los niños. Con los adultos, tales individuos se muestran cariñosos y amables, como europeos cultos y humanitarios, pero experimentan un placer especial en hacer sufrir a los niños: es su modo de amarlos. La confianza angelical de estas indefensas criaturas seduce a las personas crueles. Estas personas no saben a dónde ir ni a quién dirigirse, y ello excita sus malos instintos. Todos los hombres llevan un demonio en su interior, hijo de un carácter colérico, del sadismo, de un desencantamiento de pasiones innobles, de enfermedades contraídas en un régimen de libertinaje, de la gota, del mal funcionamiento del hígado...”

“In order to refashion the world, it is necessary for people themselves to adopt a different mental attitude. Until man becomes brother unto man, there shall be no brotherhood of men. No kind of science or material advantage will ever induce people to share their property or their rights equitably. No one will ever have enough, people will always grumble, they will always envy and destroy one another. You ask when will all this come about. It will come about, but first there must be an end to the habit of self-imposed isolation of man.’ ‘What isolation?’ I asked him. ‘The kind that is prevalent everywhere now, especially in our age, and which has not yet come to an end, has not yet run its course. For everyone nowadays strives to dissociate himself as much as possible from others, everyone wants to savour the fullness of life for himself, but all his best efforts lead not to fullness of life but to total self-destruction, and instead of ending with a comprehensive evaluation of his being, he rushes headlong into complete isolation. For everyone has dissociated himself from everyone else in our age, everyone has disappeared into his own burrow, distanced himself from the next man, hidden himself and his possessions, the result being that he has abandoned people and has, in his turn, been abandoned. He piles up riches in solitude and thinks: ‘How powerful I am now, and how secure,’ and it never occurs to the poor devil that the more he accumulates, the further he sinks into suicidal impotence. For man has become used to relying on himself alone, and has dissociated himself from the whole; he has accustomed his soul to believe neither in human aid, nor in people, nor in humanity; he trembles only at the thought of losing his money* and the privileges he has acquired. Everywhere the human mind is beginning arrogantly to ignore the fact that man’s true security is to be attained not through the isolated efforts of the individual, but in a corporate human identity. But it is certain that this terrible isolation will come to an end, and everyone will realize at a stroke how unnatural it is for one man to cut himself off from another. This will indeed be the spirit of the times, and people will be surprised how long they have remained in darkness and not seen the light. It is then that the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven…* But, nevertheless, until then man should hold the banner aloft and should from time to time, quite alone if necessary, set an example and rescue his soul from isolation in order to champion the bond of fraternal love, though he be taken for a holy fool. And he should do this in order that the great Idea should not die…”

“Would he purge his soul from vileness And attain to light and worth, He must turn and cling for ever, To his ancient Mother Earth.”

“Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and distracted step mother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it! ... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St. John.”

“You can't skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That's the easiest solution to the problem!”

“Never in her life had she seen such literary men. They were incredibly vain, but made no secret of it, as though they were so on principle. Some (though by no means all) turned up drunk, but they seemed to regard it as some new manifestation of grace they had discovered only the day before. They all appeared to be quite extraordinarily proud of something. On all faces was written that they had only just discovered some highly important secret.”

“Faith—or not faith—I don't know what it is—but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.”